The most meaningful exam

Michmister: Tomorrow is our Dharma exam on the book, Understanding Our Mind. D and I have been trying to prepare for it for the past few weeks but it will only be clear how will we have prepared when we the exam tomorrow.

Nervous but not panicking. Just wishing we could remembered what we have been taught. The interesting thing is that there are new things to remember. Feel like we have just started revision.

I do, however like these exam. the marks are not an issue. The important thing is that it forces us to study and keep the teaching on our mind for a few weeks. To me, this is very meaningful.




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Location:Seoul

Multiple headache

SpamSpam: Today I learn to times big numbers in two ways.
The first way is called the long column method.The second method is the same but shorter. I am confused with it.


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Location:Seoul

Death

Michmister : Finally, I was fed up with Facebook and had enough of myself wasting time posting messages and poking into others life. I sentenced myself to death on Facebook and delete it. Guess what - Dave followed suit. Brillant.

Location:Seoul

Kersang's Relay Station Guest House in Shangri La

Kersan's Relay Station No 1 Yamenlang Jinlong St. Old Town Shangri-La, Yunnan, china Tel: +86 887 8223 118 Mobile: +86 139 8878 9193 email: matthieuw34@gmail.com, gesanzhuoma@gmail.com

Michmister: Owned by a French guy who married a local beauty. A very comfortable place. Toilet and showers are modern. Rooms are spacious. The view was fantastic. Altogether, there were 4 rooms with ensuites, 4 room with common toilets. Price are between RMB80 to RMB 180. It was wooden structure. During summer, it was cool. Expect it to be cold in the winter. Near the old town shopping but not in it.

The Wind of Change

Michmister : Changes have been on our mind for a long time, and there have long discussions about what we are going to be and to do. We persuaded ourselves to stay because our Dharma Practice teaches us to be content.

However, as always, when the wind gathers, there is no stopping it. Both D and I felt it and we just were not sure where is it blowing.

Merit led us to meet Richard who told us about the Tibetan Thangka Academy. A seed was planted as we dreamt about painting Thangka and purifying our past harmful actions.

Then without any warning, our conditions gathered and we made the decision for D to give up his work, and we will travel to the mountain of China, Tibet Border to Shangri-la to learn Thangka Painting and Mandarin.

China/ Mongolia Border Crossing

An interesting interlude on the train from Beijing to Ulaan Bataar was a 1.5 hour stop in the middle of the night at the Chinese border town of Erlian. With no idea what was going on, we sit confused as some people get off the train and head into the station while others stay on board. We decide that the latter would be a safer bet as at least we are still 'on' the train.

And so we sit puzzled by the crashing clunks that jerk us off our seats as we go slowly back and forth into a huge maintenance shed. Once in the shed we look across at a train that has been dismantled into single carriages on the track next to us. Each carriage is slowly being lifted off it's wheels by four huge orange hydraulic jacks and the bogies are being drawn out on long steel cables. There are people sat in the carriages and on the side it says "Beijing to Ulaan Bataar" - how can we be sat parallel to our own dismantled train? Racing Jon to the end of our carriage, we find it has been uncoupled from it's neighbors and is similarly being lifted off it's wheels. Not being the brightest family on the trans-mongolian rail system, we try to work out what is going on.

Jon suggests that maybe there was a nail on the track and it burst all the tires so they have to fix them all. We double check and discover that trains have metal wheels and no tires... Michelle wonders if the sandstorm we went through earlier in the day has damaged the axels... Finally it starts to dawn on us that maybe the Chinese and Mongolian tracks are different sizes and they need to change the bogies.

Sure enough, once connected to the internet at Ulaan Bataar, we discover the well documented phenomena of the Erlian bogie change where the 1,435 mm standard gauge used by China is changed to the Russian 1,520 mm gauge used by Mongolia. It seems that this is in all the guidebooks and everyone knows about it. Having dumped our guide book in Laos, to us it was a fantastic mystery! We resolve never to bother with a guidebook again - it takes all the fun out of things.

Apparently the gauge is changed back on the Belarus/ Polish border - something to look forward to but unfortunately this time we will know exactly what's going on.

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Location:Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia